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rufey writes "The recentproblems at the Large Hadron Collider will now keep it idle until spring 2009. The official press release is here. The LHC went offline due to a suspected failure in a superconducting connection, which overheated and caused around 100 of the LHC's super-cooled magnets to heat up by as much as 100 degrees. This resulted in the accidental release of a ton of liquid helium. The process required to repair the failed superconducting connection involves weeks of warming up the affected area from -456 degrees Fahrenheit to room temperature, and then several more weeks to cool it back down after the repair is made. The total amount of time to do this will spill over into CERN's scheduled winter maintenance/shutdown period, which is partly done to save money on electricity during the period of peak demand."

I am dissappointed. We are on slashdot. Please say instead"The results will be evalutaed using GNU/Hurd"or "The operators could finish a round of DNF in the breaks" or "a microsoft linux running on phantom game consoles is used as a thin client operating system" etc...

Nah, the world can't end, haven't you ever heard of the quantum suicide thought experiment? Clearly, this delay is just the first of many, eventually leading to the cancelation of the project. It's simply the most statistically likely thing that could happen that would avert the disaster.

Because if we were in one of the unlucky universes we wouldn't be having this conversation, that's what the thought experiment is. The idea goes like this, there are an infinate number of universes so anything that could even remotely happen will happen in one of them. Since you will only be aware of a universe if you are in it to experience it, you (as in yourself) will never die.

Lets say I hook a nuclear bomb up to a detector that detects whether a single radioactive atom has decayed yet. After each ha

MODERATOR: "Senator Biden, what qualifies you to be Vice President?"
BIDEN: [answer redacted due to copyrights held by the estate of Neil Kinnock and the risk of carpal tunnel syndrome]
MODERATOR: "Yes, yes. And you, Governor Pain, what qualifies you?"
PALIN: "Nothing."[long pause] "But I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night!"Exeunt, pursued by a bear. With hair plugs and wearing lipstick.

Which reminds me, I need to make sure that my wet bar is fully stocked.

Which reminds me, I need to make sure that my wet bar is fully stocked.

You kidding? I'm having a full-out PARTY for that debate. Hot dogs, wings, and beer all around. I expect it to be more entertaining than the combined entertainment value of the last year of MTV.
Games to play: Write down your favorite dumb Palin quote of the night, toss in the hat, see which gets the most votes!
Biden roulette! Hand out poker chips, put your bets down on "Yes/No" or "Gong" for each answer.

Indeed. I'm not an expert, but I believe "a suspected failure in a superconducting connection, which overheated and caused around 100 of the LHC's super-cooled magnets to heat up by as much as 100 degrees" is just fancy-talk for "we made a wormhole, but it wasn't big enough".

since this is a european project the writers of this must have went out of their way to convert to Fahrenheit and dumben down the subject matter

While I agree it's asinine that we still use things like English units (which even the English don't use anymore, for fuck's sake), how does doing a unit conversion "dumben down" the subject matter? And you said "dumben" on purpose, right?

I think we could justifiably counter that if you really care so much, you should use Kelvin. Celsius is not an SI base unit [wikipedia.org], even though its use has been tolerated somewhat in scientific literature.

I remember reading an article on here talking about a theory in which a particle from the future could come back and shut things down.
I guess they could use that theory for any kind of downtime though.

Don't worry... what they didn't report was the cause of the leak -- and why no matter how much caulk they put over it the hole just won't go away. In fact, it seems to grow with every attempt to seal it.

I believe with all the problems they're having, the actual date when the high-energy collisions begin will be December 2012 [wikipedia.org].

That actually is appropriate, though probably not in the sense that P means. The Mesoamerican calandar that 'ends' in 2012 is just the end of a chunk of a calendar, to be followed by another chunk, and another, etc. It is like New Year's Eve for us; the end of a cycle and an excuse to party. 2012 is just an excuse to party, Mayan style, ripping the hearts out of human sacrifices or however they celebrate it.When the first collisions happen, that will be grounds for partying also.

What's the next doomsday fantasy after the 2012 one, anyway? Saying "I told you so" to the credulous has been a fine tradition for all of history [randi.org] and I'm happy to continue the practise. I need to be prepared!

Do they actually mean there was a metric ton of Liquid Helium released, or just a lot? I mean, any liquid helium spilled, even jus a measly ounce, to me seems like a big deal considering how expensive and, well, cold it is. A whole ton? Seriously, is this an actual figure or is it just an exageration? Or is it even an understatement? I really have no idea.

The cold doesnt matter, btw. Liquid helium has a really low heat capacity and evaporation enthalpy. A dewar full of liquid nitrogen spilled will do much more damage than 10 times the amount of helium, even if the helium temperature is lower.

And helium is not THAT expensive. At least compared to the other costs.

A physicists analogy is that a LN2 costs as much as cheap beer, while L He as much as good whiskey, per volume... (I once used 2000l of liquid helium in a single week because of a faulty magnet that couldnt be replaced during beamtime. Although that was of course recaptured. I hope they have options to do that in the LHC cave, too, even though the initial containment was breached)

Last time I checked, LHe was about $5 USD a liter. A metric ton is 1000kg, and LHe's density is 0.125g/ml (wikipedia), which amounts to 8000 liters or about 40k. Considering that He is non-renewable, leaking out of the atmosphere, hopefully they were able to reclaim and recompress it.

Non-renewable? Hogwash. We already have the technology to create He. It's just that it takes a lot of energy and we have to do it 1 atom at a time. Of course, that's probably only on a par with trying to recover it from the atmosphere...

Look at the
LHC cyro status for sector 3-4 [web.cern.ch]. Average magnet temperature is now at 70K, and
slowly creeping up to room temperature. Notice the expanded vertical scale on the graph.
Compare with the other sectors, holding with liquid helium at 1.9K.

Warmup is slow. Cooldown is slower. Several kilometers of pipe and a hundred or so magnets are involved.

It's not that bad, though. It looks like they won't have to take magnets out of
the tunnel for rewinding. That's a huge job. This is just a slow one.

They can warm up or chill down sector 3-4 during the shutdown period. The rest of the system would normally be cooled during shutdown anyway.

Okay, I'm a born and raised American, and -453 Fahrenheit means nothing to me. Even us Americans use Celsius for science. If I read a temperature outside of what the weatherman could report, then a Fahrenheit measurement is just another number that I have to convert before it will mean something. (Let's see... being a former Clevelander, the weatherman range would be from about -30 to 110 F.)

You're not familiar with large scale industrial operations. Even a large boiler must be disabled for a week or so before reaching room temperature. You're not going to be able to bring that much material to such a low temperature quickly.

Spacesuits operate in vacuum, which means there are almost no no particles around, so the word temperature does not make much sense there. Vacuum is an excellent insulator, so it is easy to keep them warm. It is a myth that you instantly freeze when exposed to the vacuum of space.